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Lord Gould of Brookwood: My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, on an excellent speech. She is a tremendous person. The whole speech possessed honesty, integrity and authenticity. It was a marvellous speech and I am proud to follow it.
I stand here today with some nervousness, but much awe. I feel proud and privileged to be a part of this House, a part of Parliament. I am quite unambiguous about this: I consider being in this place, having the chance to speak in this debate, to be an honour far beyond anything I ever expected in life.
Other maiden speakers have remarked fulsomely on the warmth that they have received as new Members. I echo that. People could not have been nicer to me—not just the excellent staff who work here, nor my political friends, but also my political opponents. I particularly appreciated the welcome of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who last week in this House compared me and a government Minister to Burke and
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Hare, the notorious mass murderers of the early 19th century who claimed 16 victims in a particularly ghoulish fashion before Burke was finally executed, and Hare escaped into obscurity after turning King's evidence. I am not sure whether to take that as a warning, an admonition, or a helpful piece of advice.
In a House of such extraordinary range of expertise mine is rather arcane: the planning and fighting of election campaigns. I have not always been successful even at that. As one newspaper commented:
"Labour's newest peer is probably best known for losing things. In 1997 it was the election campaign: he left the entire strategy— every advertisement and every poster—at the Burger King restaurant in Euston Station on the first day of the campaign. On plenty of other occasions he has lost the election as well. He lost for Labour in 1987 and 1992, and for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1990".
All of us have moments we would like to forget. The article goes on to say that I imported focus groups into the UK for use in politics, an importation that I am sure some would put on a par with rabies or black elm disease, with a roughly equivalent effect on the quality of British politics.
Of course, it would not have been appropriate, nor possible, for me to have made this speech without conducting my own focus groups on this august House. The results, as always, show how subtle public opinion can be. People think that the House of Lords is, at one and the same time, somewhat old fashioned and an important part of the contemporary political process, and they like it the more because there is less bipartisan acrimony.
Of course, there are difficulties with identifying some of our Members. The noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, for example, was believed to be Michael Caine and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, Des Lynam. No one ever said that the judgment of the public is impeccable.
Discovering the voice of the people has always been an obsession for me. I have always held the view that the voices of all should be heard, and should be heard equally. That was, and is, the lodestar of my political life, and from the very start I have believed that the voice of the people should be trusted. I once described the typical attitudes of the very unassuming lower middle class suburb in which I was bought up. I wrote:
"Every political judgment was rooted in a hard common sense. They were tough on crime. They were fiercely patriotic. They believed in fair reward for hard work; in responsibility. They wanted to get on. They wanted a better life".
That to me is the authentic voice of Britain, at least the Britain I know and understand best.
I have always respected that voice, always sought to hear it and always valued it. And yet I know many, and some in this Chamber, are frightened by that, fearing rule by demagogue, by populist sentiment, by ill-informed mass opinion. But I say to those who are frightened, let go of your fear. There is no dark hidden underswell of populist opinion ready to sweep away the liberalism and the judicial rights we have enjoyed for generations. There are only mums and dads and kids and grandparents; people living tough lives, doing
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demanding jobs, coping with change, dealing with uncertainty and grounded in values of fairness and responsibility.
Nowhere is that fear of the people greater than with the issues that surround crime and security. Nowhere, I believe, is that fear more misplaced. Of course people care about crime, because without security from crime, life for many cannot even start. It cannot get going. It is the poor who suffer most from burglary; the young and disadvantaged who suffer most from violent crime; and the elderly who see the disfiguring of their community as a disfiguring of themselves and of their past.
Crime is the most fundamental violation of a person's civil liberty that it is possible to imagine. In response to that people do not have the simple one-dimensional opinions so often ascribed to them but complex, nuanced views. They want tough sentences for serious crimes; and when it comes to terrorism they want no risks taken and no corners cut to protect their family and their nation. But it is also true that people believe that prison is not the only answer to crime and that rehabilitation is essential. They know that dealing with the causes of crime is as vital as dealing with its perpetrators.
The public have a balanced view. They do not see crime as an issue of right and left but of rights and responsibility. There is an implicit bargain between citizen and state: the state protects, the citizen contributes and liberty ensues. This contract is at the heart of our society and it is the responsibility of us all to honour it. We do not do so by leaving public concerns behind, nor by failing to respect equally all parts of the bargain. The British people value liberty, but they know that without security liberty crumbles.
The goal of politics is not to concede to fear but to defeat it. Ours have always been the politics of hope. The more secure a community or nation, the greater the chance of opportunity. The more opportunity there is, the safer our world will be. Our people do not want their leaders to form camps—some for security, some for liberty, some tough and some tolerant. They want their leaders to be bigger and more visionary than that, knowing that in this new world liberty and security must learn to coexist.
It is a virtue of this House that differences can be transcended and a bigger view taken. The public respect this House because it can achieve balance, transcend politics and play a crucial revising role. In turn, we should respect the view of the British people, and know that they too seek balanced and serious solutions to these complex and difficult social issues.
The measures outlined in the gracious Speech are right and the public are right to support them. We can trust the people. I once again thank this House for the honour of addressing it.
Lord Newton of Braintree: My Lords, I count it a singular pleasure to be the one who follows that maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Gould of
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Brookwood, which I found in equal measure to be both engaging and impressive as a declaration of his personal views.
I do not think that our paths have crossed physically very much in the past, but of course there is no one in British politics whose path has not crossed with that of the noble Lord, Lord Gould, in one way or another. His is a name to conjure with as a political guru. He has had a significant influence on the development of the British political scene as it now is; and, indeed, on a personal level I suppose that I could hand him some of the credit for seven years ago bringing about my translation from the other end of the building to this one; a move for which—dare I say?—I find myself increasingly grateful.
The noble Lord's arrival here under his new name undoubtedly—on the basis of the speech we have heard this afternoon—presages many more contributions of a depth and quality that we shall all listen to with great respect and, indeed, look forward to hearing in due course.
Lord Newton of Braintree: My Lords, perhaps I may also add a brief word about the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser. I discovered that she and I have something in common. Her father was a greengrocer of a kind that has no doubt been swept largely aside by the supermarkets. My father was an old-style ironmonger. His was that kind of shop where a man in a brown coat can find anything in a drawer behind him, which has almost completely disappeared under the march of the supermarkets.
I shall not attempt so wide-ranging a speech as the noble Lord, Lord Gould. I discovered that on wearing various hats which I shall not enumerate, I have an interest in many parts of the programme in the gracious Speech. However, I should acknowledge at once that the kind and generous remarks of my noble friend Lady Anelay were not an accurate prediction of what I should talk about, which was anti-terrorism matters. On that front I would rather wait and see what the Government have to say because one of the problems in that field has been too many hasty judgments and not enough reflection; and I think that the Government's proposals need to be considered.
I want to focus, albeit in the non-partisan way that my noble friend predicted, on another measure which she did not mention, but which she is evidently leaving for comment by my noble friend Lord Kingsland on the Front Bench. That is the proposed draft courts and tribunals Bill. I declare at once an interest as chairman of the Council on Tribunals. I thought that the Times did the Bill a bit less than justice in saying in its summary list that the draft courts and tribunals Bill simplifies the law relating to bailiffs. "Survival rating: 0". That is, 0 out of 5, bearing in mind prospective political uncertainties. I do not have the faintest notion whether the Bill will include anything about bailiffs, but I know that I do not see that as its main point.
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More importantly, I very much hope that its survival rating is a great deal more than nil, for reasons that I hope to explain.
As I have indicated, I am chairman of the Council on Tribunals and have been since 1999. That council was set up in the late 1950s after the Franks report with what is described as a supervisory role over tribunal systems.
In a sense, my interest in these matters goes back further, to some 22 years ago when, as the mere Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security and the humble servant of my noble friend Lord Fowler, I was responsible for, or in charge of in a day-to-day sense, a reform of the Social Security Appeal System, as it then was. For the first time, it transferred the appointment of the judiciary in that system to what was then the Lord Chancellor's Department and created a proper presidential system, independent to that degree of the department whose decisions were being challenged. I have always thought that that was the right way to go.
Now, 20 years later we find that what I would really have liked to do at the time, which was to transfer the administration as well, will shortly happen. However, it will be helped materially if this Bill is not only published in draft but also passed into law.
The background, of course, is that a huge amount has happened in the tribunal world since Franks and, indeed, even in the 20 years since I was concerned with the social security system. It is only recently that a new strategic look—after 40 years—has been taken at the whole tribunal world. That is greatly to the credit of the former Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who in 2000 asked Sir Andrew Leggatt to conduct a wide-ranging review. He did that very rapidly and produced a report under the heading of Tribunals for Users—One System, One Service. Its core suggestion was to bring together tribunals scattered around the Whitehall scene into a single unified tribunals service.
Not surprisingly, although it was always strongly supported by the Council on Tribunals and, indeed, by me personally, that proposal was not greeted with universal enthusiasm around Whitehall where government departments were being asked to give something up.
After a long period of negotiation a White Paper was published last July called Transforming Public Services: Complaints, Redress and Tribunals, which brought the Government to sign up to that proposal. That White Paper was greatly to the credit not only of the present Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor but also not least to the Minister's predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Filkin. He took a very special and constructive interest in this matter and produced a document setting tribunals into the wider context of administrative justice as a whole, including the improvement of decision making to avoid disputes in the first place and with a greater emphasis on proportional dispute resolution.
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I should acknowledge that that White Paper will bring a wider role to the Council on Tribunals, which we welcome and are already seeking to develop. With the clear commitment from the Government to a unified tribunals system, bringing five of the largest tribunal systems from outside the Department for Constitutional Affairs together with the five that it already has, to create the basis of the unified service, progress has significantly accelerated.
We now have a senior president designate to provide judicial leadership, Lord Justice Carnwath. Within the next week or so, we shall have a chief executive designate. No doubt all of that can bring about quite a lot of progress without a Bill, but to complete that promising and worthwhile reform, we need a Bill. So I very much welcomed the commitment to a draft contained in the gracious Speech. I want also specifically to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, to her post, as she, with the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State, has shown every sign of just as strong a commitment in that field as her predecessors. I look forward to working with them in that capacity.
I wish her well. Perhaps I dare say to my noble friend on the Front Bench, bearing in mind the political uncertainties to which I referred earlier, that I hope that my Front Bench, whether it remains in opposition or should any change occur to its position, will also ensure that those worthwhile proposals receive a fair wind. If I have any questions for the noble Baroness, they are: when will we see the draft and how soon after that will it be a real Bill with a real basis for those very worthwhile reforms?
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